In the early 2000s, the BBC proved that it could rival Hollywood’s spectacle without blockbuster budgets, leveraging cutting-edge CGI and documentary rigour to pioneer a new breed of docudrama. While series like Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) resurrected prehistoric worlds, others ventured into speculative futures, exploring catastrophic “what if” scenarios with scientific precision. Among these, Supervolcano (2005)—a two-part television film directed by Tony Mitchell—stands out as both ambitious and flawed. A chilling portrayal of the apocalyptic eruption of Yellowstone Caldera, the film melds factual groundwork with disaster-movie theatrics, only to falter under the weight of its own contrivances. Though commendable for its educational aims and chilling premise, Supervolcano ultimately buckles under tonal inconsistency, melodramatic excess, and a curious detachment from the human stakes it seeks to interrogate.
Written by Edward Canfor-Dumas, whose earlier work Pompeii: The Last Day (2003) chronicled history’s most infamous volcanic disaster, Supervolcano shifts focus to a far grander, if less familiar, cataclysm. The film hinges on a terrifying geological reality: beneath Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park lies a dormant supervolcano, responsible for three eruptions over 2.1 million years, each thousands of times more powerful than Mount St. Helens. Scientists agree another eruption is inevitable—a premise Canfor-Dumas extrapolates into a near-future scenario (circa 2020) where bureaucratic inertia and scientific discord collide with primal forces. The narrative oscillates between clinical exposition and B-movie suspense, attempting to balance disaster tropes with a sobering message about humanity’s fragility. While the science is meticulously researched—consultants from the US Geological Survey lent credibility—the script often feels like a lecture punctuated by explosions, lacking the emotional heft.
Divided into two hour-long segments, Supervolcano opens with a prologue set five years post-eruption, featuring faux-documentary interviews with survivors. This framing device, reminiscent of the BBC’s Smallpox 2002, aims for verisimilitude but sabotages suspense by revealing key characters’ fates upfront. The first act, “Unrest,” introduces Dr. Rick Lieberman (Michael Riley), head of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, whose initial scepticism about an imminent eruption erodes as seismic anomalies mount. Riley plays Lieberman as a weary everyman, his understated performance grounding the escalating chaos. His warnings to FEMA undersecretary Wendy Reiss (Rebecca Jenkins) spark bureaucratic friction, with Jenkins deftly balancing pragmatism and dread. Yet their exchanges—the film’s strongest scenes—are undermined by the prologue’s spoilers, draining urgency from the countdown to disaster.
When the eruption arrives, depicted through a mix of CGI lava flows and archival footage, the spectacle feels curiously muted. Lieberman, stranded in a Cheyenne bunker after a diverted flight, becomes an unlikely survivalist, while Reiss coordinates a futile federal response. The global scale of the crisis—ash clouds blotting out the sun, crops failing, economies collapsing—is conveyed through montages of stock footage and voiceover narration. This approach, though budget-conscious, reduces catastrophe to a slideshow, divorcing viewers from the human toll. Lieberman’s claustrophobic ordeal, potentially a crucible for tension, devolves into a waiting game, his fate telegraphed from the outset.
Filmed in Vancouver with a transatlantic cast (British leads alongside Canadian supporting actors), Supervolcano strives for a global perspective but often feels geographically unmoored. The Canadian Rockies doubling as Wyoming lack Yellowstone’s iconic vistas, while the sterile FEMA war rooms and ash-choked cityscapes exude a generic, made-for-TV flatness. The CGI, groundbreaking for 2005 television, has aged unevenly: pyroclastic surges and collapsing infrastructure retain visceral impact, but the ash-blanketed landscapes now resemble overbaked video game cutscenes. The score, a forgettable blend of droning synths and elegiac strings, does little to elevate the drama.
Riley and Jenkins anchor the film with grounded, if unremarkable, turns. Riley’s Lieberman is no action hero—a refreshing choice—but a beleaguered scientist torn between duty and despair. Jenkins, meanwhile, imbues Reiss with steely resolve, her performance evoking the quiet horror of a bureaucrat realising her playbook is obsolete. Less successful are the supporting players: Susan Duerden, as Lieberman’s estranged wife, strains for pathos in a superfluous subplot, while Robert Wisden’s turn as rival scientist Kenneth Wiley veers into pantomime villainy. The revelation that Wiley is Lieberman’s brother-in-law—a twist dripping with soap-opera absurdity—epitomises the script’s tonal indecision, grafting personal vendettas onto a global crisis.
Canfor-Dumas’ script undermines its own gravitas with Hollywood-inflected melodrama. The subplot involving Lieberman’s family—evacuated to London as America burns—reeks of contrivance, their transatlantic phone calls straining for emotional weight. Worse still is the final twist that reveals fate of the protagonist. This deus ex machina betrays the film’s bleak premise, opting for facile closure over existential reckoning. Similarly, the inclusion of Wiley—a scientist accused of fearmongering for profit—feels like a hollow stab at moral complexity, reduced to a personal feud that trivialises the disaster’s scale.
Supervolcano courted accusations of political bias upon release, with critics alleging its depiction of a ruined American heartland—and a female president facing public backlash—reflected anti-Bush-era sentiments. The film’s focus on “flyover country” as ground zero (Wyoming, Montana) juxtaposed with the relative safety of coastal elites could be read as a metaphor for political divides, particularly given the BBC’s reputation for left-leaning critique. The president, portrayed as a pragmatic woman maligned by populist outrage, invites parallels to Hillary Clinton—a figure polarising long before her 2016 campaign. While these elements may reflect contemporary anxieties, they feel incidental rather than incendiary, a byproduct of the film’s sprawling scope rather than a coherent ideological stance.
Supervolcano is not without merit: its scientific rigor, coupled with Riley and Jenkins’ committed performances, offers fleeting glimpses of the masterpiece it might have been. Yet its refusal to fully confront the horror of its own premise—opting for tidy resolutions and petty personal conflicts—renders it a missed opportunity. In an era of global crises, the film’s vision of societal collapse feels eerily prescient, its failures of imagination a mirror for our own. For all its eruptions and ash clouds, Supervolcano’s true tragedy lies in its reluctance to stare into the abyss—and report back unflinchingly.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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